In 1930s Mexico, in a cave, a young girl found a skeleton of a normal human woman lying on the ground. Near the woman’s skeleton, there was a small hand sticking up out of the dirt. Curious, the young girl began to dig. The owner of the small hand was another skeleton which looked misshapen all over. Unfortunately, only the skull remains. It is this skull that has become known as the “starchild skull.”

Starchildren are children who are half alien and half human. There are several cultures with stories about otherworldly beings that come down to impregnate human women. The child is usually raised by the village until its father returns for it.

The skull was obtained by paranormalist Lloyd Pye from a couple who lived in Texas. He claims to have made every effort to explain the deformities of the skull, but has come up empty-handed. There are many who believe the skull is the genuine remains of alien/human breeding or even genetic manipulation. Others claim that the skull disfigurations are consistent with the characteristics of congenital hydrocephalus.

One way to be sure is DNA testing, but it seems this is also a little strange. Wikipedia says that the DNA test came back as entirely human, as both X- and Y-chromosomes were found, but the official starchild project website claims only the Y-chromosomes were found and that the sample may have been contaminated.

In 2003 testing revealed that the mother was probably a Native American woman, but this result is also disputed. The starchild project claims that in 2010 another DNA test resulted in finding that a “substantial percentage of that DNA has ‘no significant similarity’ to any DNA previously found on Earth.” In 2011 another geneticist working on the project discovered that the mitochondrial DNA was also radically different from human DNA. Meaning that the mother was also not human.

Other Mysteries:

The skull is less than 1/3 the thickness of the bone in a human skull.

The starchild’s skull is much harder than a human skull.

The mouth was infant sized with a flat roof, as opposed to arched, indicating a small or missing tongue.

At 3:00 am in Oakville, Washington on August 7, 1994 it began to rain. This was no ordinary rain however. It wasn’t water that was falling from the sky, but a gelatinous substance. Over the next few weeks, this gelatinous substance would fall a total of six times. There has been a history of strange things falling from the sky, even animals, but this case would prove to be one of the strangest, and scariest.

By the afternoon of the first day many of the residents of the small town had fallen ill. They reported a variety of symptoms including blurred vision, difficulty breathing, vertigo, and nausea. The illness would affect most people for two to three months.

A sample of the strange rain was collected and sent to a lab to be tested. Although what it was couldn’t be identified, it was found to have human white blood cells. It was also found to have two types of bacteria, one that was found in the human digestive symptom. Later another microbiologist thought he saw Eukaryote cell, which would suggest that the substance was or at one time had been alive.

There have been several theories proposed to explain this phenomenon. Some suggest that it was mishandled “blue ice” from an airplane. This is human waste that is supposed to be dyed blue, and not released mid-flight. The fact that the rain fell numerous times would make this scenario unlikely. Further the labs would have found more evidence pointing to the origin being human in nature. Some say that it was a school of jellyfish that had accidentally been blown up while the military was doing bombing runs in the pacific. Oakville is only 50 miles inland. Again the number of times the rain fell would discredit this scenario. A far more unsettling theory states that the military was involved in a secret experiment. They were either testing the effects of a new biological weapon, or trying to gauge how one might be used on a population, and the residents of Oakville were just unwitting participants. The military denies any knowledge of what might have happened, but several residents had noticed slow-moving military aircraft in the skies above their town right before the rain started to fall. The case has never been solved and no samples of the substance exist today.

Here’s a creepy mystery for you. This is an unsolved case of an unknown dead man.

The body of the man was found dead at 6:30 am on December 1st, 1948, in Adelaide, South Australia. Several factors may have contributed to the popularity of this case, including what appeared to be a secret code on a scrap of paper in the victim’s pocket and the use of an undetectable poison.

Witnesses claim to have seen him (or a man resembling him) lying in the same spot and position earlier the previous evening. All the labels on his clothes were missing, although they did appear to be of high quality. He had no wallet or distinguishing marks, and his face was clean-shaven.

Although many people came forward through the course of the investigation to say they could identify the man, all of the claims were dis-proven.

Not strange enough yet? A tiny, rolled-up piece of paper torn from a book was found sewn into the man’s pocket. The words “Tamam shud” were printed on it, and it was translated to mean “ended” or “finished.” This led a man to tell police that he had found a copy of “The Rubaiyat” in the backseat of his unlocked car (it was the 40s after all), a couple of weeks before the body was found. Tests later confirmed the ripped page was from the same book. The back of the book appeared to have some kind of code written in pencil.

Also in the book was the unlisted phone number of a nurse, who said she owned a copy of “The Rubaiyat,” but had given it away to a man named Alfred Boxall. The woman’s reaction to the plaster cast that was made of the dead man led police to believe that he was in fact Boxall. At least, they did until they found Boxall alive, and still in possession of his copy of “The Rubaiyat.”

Here is one final mystery about this case. Years after the burial, flowers began appearing on the grave. Who was the mystery man? The most plausible theory, given the time, was that the mystery man was a spy. Even if that is the case, it would just go to show that sometimes fact is stranger than fiction.

In 1997 the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) picked up a strange sound on their underwater hydrophones (sensors used to listen to underwater noise). According to NOAA, The Bloop, as the noise was nicknamed, rose rapidly in frequency and was loud enough to be heard on multiple sensors 5,000 km apart. That’s a little over 3100 miles.

Some say that the noise is consistent with ice quakes and ice calving, but there is a far more interesting theory circulating as well. There are some people who believe that The Bloop was made by a living creature, but that the creature would have to be far louder than the blue whale (which is currently the loudest known species in the ocean). At the very least it would have to be better at generating such loud noises, even if it wasn’t bigger than the blue whale. At this time scientists still don’t know with absolute certainty what the cause was, but I believe it was a kraken.

By the way, on NOAA’s website they do confirm that The Bloop was caused by an icequake, but I still like my kraken idea. Besides, now I can complain of a coverup and conspiracy!

In the 1920s, a woman who went by the nickname of Netta Fornario died in a mysterious manner. She died on the small island of Iona, which is off of Scotland. In mid-November her body was discovered naked on Fairy Mound (which is apparently the name of the hill, although there are some articles that say she was found on an actual fairy mound which is where fairies are said to inhabit). She was lying on a large cross that had been cut from the turf with a small blade that lay close to the body.

Netta herself was a student of the occult, and believed she could cure people with telepathy. When she visited Iona she attempted to contact the “spirits” of the island through trances. By all accounts something seemed to have spooked her enough that on the 17th of November she began packing her belongings with the intention of going back to London. Upon learning that she could not immediately leave the island she apparently resigned herself to staying, and even stated that she had changed her mind and would stay indefinitely.

Strange Facts:

Her body was found on a remote part of the island that she had never visited.

She was naked except for a black cloak.

The night before the 17th, the woman she was staying with noticed Netta’s silver jewelry had turned black overnight.

There were stories of strange blue lights being seen near her body, as well as a man in a cloak.

There were several deep scratches on various areas of her body. None were fatal.

Letters of “strange character” were found amongst her belongings.

The night before she had mentioned seeing a “rudderless boat that went across the sky” and “messages from other worlds”.

Theories about her death range from hypothermia to a psychic attack to aliens.